


Red

by GoldStarGrl



Category: The Thrilling Adventure Hour
Genre: Angst, F/M, M/M, Minor Character Death, Origin Story, Spoilers, color study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 00:51:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17033180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldStarGrl/pseuds/GoldStarGrl
Summary: “It’s gon’ be fine, Sparks. There’s always someone out there who needs our help.”





	Red

**i.**

The dark red sand reminds him of home, of Earth.

Carson used to take him camping in the desert with nothing but two bed rolls tucked under his arm, carrying Sparks on his back like so many piggies. They’d lie among the cacti and skittering animals, and Sparks absently picked up handfuls of tan sand, letting the grains sift through his fingers back to whence they came.

Carson pointed up at the stars, at distant planets and suns where the USSA was sending their parents next. “It’s gon’ be fine, Sparks. There’s always someone out there who needs our help.”

Every six months or so the Nevadas packed up the apartment and shipped off to some other base. Sparks and Carson spent most of their childhood in the air. Chasing each other through hallways of the _USS Indomitable_ ’s residential decks. Pressing their faces against the window at the sight of glowing purple moons looming below them. They spent two weeks on Mars when he was twelve and Carson freshly eighteen, and they didn’t even get to leave the ship.

Mom said it was too dangerous. Dad said they’d get themselves into a fight with some Marjin savages. Carson and Dad had a big shouting match after that.

But eventually, they’d turn up back on Earth. Back to the desert, side by side until the day Carson left for the USSA Academy, and didn't have time to come back for sleepovers with his little brother. Three years after that, there's the firefight on Pluto, and he doesn't come back at all.

The Martian sands under Sparks's boots reminds him of the kind he used to try to hang onto, to keep from being flung into the sky.

It’s the wrong color, though.

 

**ii.**

Red isn’t particular fierce or scary when she’s asleep. She’s beautiful.

He started awake at nothing in particular, hand halfway to his gun before realizing there wasn’t no danger that needed dealing with. The dying embers of their campfire glowed at his feet. Feet that curled of their own volition, around her ankles in his sleep. In the faint light, Sparks watches her face soft and almost childlike, hair splayed out around her head like rays from a sun.

Before he realizes – or more honestly, can talk himself out of – what he’s doing, he presses up against her side in the dark, and _smells her hair._

It’s long and sunbaked, flecks of dirt mixed in. The strands are soft, slipping out of her braids that get mussed when she sleeps on her back.

Red hair, but not in the way his is.

He’s never liked his own, too bright and unruly and most of all,  _orange._  ‘bout the farthest and ugliest it could get from red and still take the name. Her’s is truly deserving of the name, that deep, rich scarlet. The kind that made it seem like she actually rose from the plains of the planet around them, created from the stars and dust.

He inhales again, and his heart stutters, just a little.

She shifts, her shoulder rubbing against him, and he rolls away quickly, staring up at the sky so he can pretend he wasn’t just acting like a crazy person.

Whatever.

 

**iii.**

He kissed Croach once.

A lot of space bourbons went into that. Space bourbon and a stinging pain in his chest, after Red, and their daughter that never was, and Rebecca, and Mercy. And a strange, long look on the steps outside the space saloon. It was dark and late at night.

A lot of stuff went into that kiss. He doesn’t really need to talk them all out in a listlike fashion.

It was quick. He had to rock forward on the balls of his feet (not on to his tiptoes, shut up) to reach Croach’s mouth, and after about three seconds of Croach’s weirdly warm lips came the realization that Croach was not kissing him back, and oh God, this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to him, ever.

He pulled away, fell down onto his heels, and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

“...sorry,” he forced out between his teeth. His face was flaming.

Croach stared at him again, antennae twitching. “The skin on your face is red, Sparks Nevada.”

Strike that last statement, _this_ is the worst thing that’s ever happened. “Reckon I would be, after a move like that.”

“Are you experiencing a chemical reaction due to your unsuccessful attempt to copulate with me?”

“We are never talking about this again, d’you understand?” He turned and made a beeline for his horse, still unsteady from the drink.

“You are still extremely red.”

 

**iv.**

Pemily wakes up screaming and clawing at her own arms, fighting off enemies that aren’t there.

He finds himself tending to the thin red lines of blood that run down to her elbows, after she’s been convinced that she’s on a cot in the marshal station and not on the torn up fields of the moon, seriously, put down the knife.

Sixteen. Same age he was, when Carson died.

“You never stop seeing your dead, do you?” She says. He cuts his eyes away, focusing on dabbing her forearms with gauze. “I knew it.”

  
  
**v.**

Ginny paints her nails bright red.

She must put on a fresh layer every few days, because he never sees them chip. Almost like they grow out that way.

Maybe they do. Maybe that’s part of her shapeshifting, Jupiterian make up. Perfect, glossy nails, a shock of color when she rakes her hands through her dark hair, scraping lightly down his back and thighs. Just the right detail to draw him in.

She sits down on the edge of the bed, tapping them against her leg. He watches the soothing, repetitive motion of her fingers rising and falling for a few moments, soaking in the silence. If they sit here long enough, not talking, watching each other move in tiny ways, she will still be his wife, and they still have some sort semblance of a life riding off in a sunlike direction.

“Looking at the ring?” She asks, finally.

“Lookin’ at your nails,” he says, and she lifts them off her knee, reaches to touch his hand, and he tenses, down through his fingertips. Ginny takes it anyway, holds it up a few inches from her mouth. “I like the red,” he says, dumbly.

“Not gonna eat you,” she murmurs, and presses a kiss to his fingers. Sparks still doesn’t relax. She looks up and her irises are tinted a dark rogue that wasn’t there just a few seconds before.

He clenches his hand, startled, and returns her grip hard. “Whoa.”

“You like red? I can go redder.”

“No, _no,_  don’t do that, that would be terrifying.” Ginny frowns, put out, and tries to retract her hand, but he hangs on tighter. “I...like that. Whatever.”

Ginny smiles, rubs her red thumb against his palm, and it’s enough, for now.


End file.
